This was the final novel featuring the Sixth Doctor. It is also the final Sixth Doctor adventure overall, as the ending leads directly into the television story Time and the Rani. It was also the first Past Doctor Adventures novel to be published after the start of the revived series.

The novel reveals the circumstances behind the Doctor's regeneration into his seventh incarnation, which were left a mystery in the televised version of the event. According to the novel, the Sixth Doctor was already dying by the time the Rani boarded his TARDIS after the events of this story, and her attack propagated the Sixth Doctor's inevitable death sooner than it would have occurred.

It is the first account of the regeneration in a BBC-licensed venue. In 2015, Big Finish would later approach a different version of the regeneration in audio form by releasing The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure. However, it remains the only official account of the regeneration in prose form, novelisations not withstanding.

Contents

Carsus: the largest repository of knowledge in the universe — in any universe, for there is an infinite number of potential universes; or rather, there should be. So why are there now just 117,863? And why, every so often, does another one just wink out of existence?

The Doctor and Mel arrive on Carsus to see the Doctor's old friend Professor Rummas — but he has been murdered. Can they solve the mystery of a contracting multiverse, and expose the murderer?

The novel and chapter titles are named after the EP and songs by British punk band the Buzzcocks.

The Sixth Doctor is the second Doctor to have the circumstances of his regeneration explained in spin-off media rather than a television story, the previous being the Second Doctor, whose regeneration was seen in the comic story The Night Walkers.

Mel witnesses several different versions of the Doctor, including one with a penguin, presumably Frobisher. Two Doctors wear blue coats. Both are accompanied by a lady in her fifties, who is meant to be Evelyn Smythe. (WC: Real Time)

For the purposes of this list, a "regeneration story" is one in which a regeneration is actually and initially depicted. For this reason The War Games is not included below, even though it is commonly thought of as a "regeneration story". It doesn't actually include a clear scene of regeneration, and the preponderance of stories in other media confirm that the Second Doctor did not regenerate at the end of it. Additionally, immediate post-regeneration stories, like the 2005 Children in Need Special — and ones like Castrovalva, where the regeneration sequence was replayed — are not included.

Regeneration is usually considered a biologic process exclusive to Time Lords and a few other species. However, some consider Regeneration and The Eclipse of the Korven to also be "regeneration stories", though neither describes anything close to a biological process. Korven is a particularly hard one to include in this list, because K9 is said to "regenerate" but is largely physically unchanged.